


Brave New World

by queenofthorns



Series: Brave New World [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:57:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthorns/pseuds/queenofthorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The long journey from Harrenhal is finally over but King's Landing is no less dangerous, especially when Brienne meets a member of Jaime's family.</p><p>Spoilers for episode 3.10 and earlier (basically this is TV!canon and my head canon, and occasionally I've been filching a line or two from the books.)</p><p>This is a sort of sequel to my series <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/45551">Terra Incognita</a>, though you can read one without the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brave New World

At the Dragon Gate, they are forced to wait for a train of oxen and a dozen carts laden with grain and casks of wine to enter King’s Landing before them. The oxen are branded and the carts and casks are stamped with Tyrell roses, which raise a cheer from the bystanders who watch them rumble past.

“If we close our eyes,” Jaime mutters to Brienne, “we can pretend they’re cheering for us.”

The city assaults Brienne’s senses. Though the sun is high in the sky, the upper stories of the buildings are built so close to each other that the horses move through a murky twilight, and Brienne senses, rather than sees, dark shapes moving in the shadows. As her eyes adjust to the dim light, the noise seems to swell: the rumble of wooden wheels on cobblestones, the shriek and clang of metal, and the din of thousands upon thousands of voices raised in laughter, complaint, ecstasy and anger make her ears ring. The smell makes her head swim: a compound of jasmine and lemon trees, the sweat of close-packed bodies, slops, roasting meat, rotting vegetation, sun-baked stone, and underneath it all, the faint unmistakeable tang of the sea. 

Bolton’s men are as uncomfortable as Brienne. “Never seen nor smelled anything like it, m’lady,” Wren tells her. “And I was in White Harbor once.”  

Jaime seems oblivious to it all, urging his horse on without hesitation, pushing past Steelshanks to take the lead. When they reach the bottom of Aegon’s Hill, Brienne tips her head back to see the blood-red keep that at its summit. The road broadens, and the smell and sounds recede as they climb; trills of birdsong float out from high-walled summer gardens.

At last they dismount at the great barbican, guarded by a dozen men whose dark-green cloaks are strewn with embroidered yellow roses. Brienne knows those colors all too well; once they guarded _her_ king.  

“Halt,” their captain commands. “No further.”

“I am the Queen’s brother,” Jaime begins.

One of the Tyrell men guffaws. “Have you grown overnight then?” 

“Her _other_ brother,” Jaime says. “Jaime. This is my escort, Lord Bolton’s men, commanded by Steelshanks Walton. And Lady Brienne of Tarth.”

“Never heard of Walton or Bolton,” the Tyrell captain insists. “And the Kingslayer’s no crippled vagabond.”

“Lord Bolton’s hobby is flaying the disobedient,” Jaime says. Each syllable falls sharp and clear as shattering glass. “Send for someone to open these gates before I give you to his men for some practice.”

The captain’s hand goes to his sword, as does Walton’s. _I have not brought Jaime all this way to have him fall at the gates of the Red Keep for the sake of wounded pride._ Brienne steps forward between Jaime and the Tyrell men.

“Jaime,” she warns in a whisper.

One of the guardsmen stares at her, the light of recognition dawning in his face. 

“Captain,” he says, “I know her. She was in the melee at Bitterbridge. The Maid of Tarth. Her armor was blue and copper. ”

“Aye,” another Tyrell man chimes in. “She pounded Ser Loras into the ground.”

Jaime quirks an eyebrow at Brienne, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “If only I had known,” he says to her, "I might have been more circumspect with you.”

"Captain," the second soldier says,"if she's who they say, then maybe the others are as well." 

The Tyrell captain studies Brienne through narrowed eyes before relaxes his grip on his sword. “Very well,” he says. “I will send for someone.”

While they wait, Bolton’s men discuss the “soft southern roses” who guard the Red Keep, their voices pitched so the Tyrell guardsmen can hear them. Brienne notices more than a few angry stares from the other side but Jaime pays no heed to the growing tension.

Just as Brienne wonders whether she will be forced to make these men keep the peace, they are saved by the arrival of a fussy, weak-chinned man in a mottled green-brown doublet that makes him look like a tortoise. “I am one of the Hand’s seneschals,” he says ushering all of them into the castle bailey. “If it please you, you may wait here.”

“It does not please me,” Jaime says, looking mutinous. 

“The Hand’s orders,” the seneschal insists. “Strangers must wait here until someone has vouched for them. I do not know you, or this lady, or these men.”

“Then send for someone who does,” Jaime insists. “My sister, the Queen; my father; my brother.”

“The Queen Regent, the Hand and the Master of Coin are in the Tower of the Hand, attending a meeting of the Small Council.” 

“Send for one of them now,” Jaime says, “or Lord Tywin be one seneschal short of a set.”

The seneschal bows and scuttles away.

“I have half a mind to follow. Surely my father...” Jaime holds himself taut as a bowstring, tapping his right foot impatiently. _He’s nervous_ , Brienne realizes. 

The unforgiving noonday sun shows silver threads in Jaime’s hair and beard, fresh red scars across his cheek and the bridge of his nose, lines at the corners of his eyes, and most of all, the absence at the end of his right arm. He is still the fairest man Brienne has ever seen. _Renly_ , a voice whispers inside her head. _Have you forgotten him so soon?_

Jaime progresses from tapping his foot to pacing, twenty steps in one direction, then twenty steps back. _A caged lion_ , Brienne thinks, _though this cage is of his own making._

“You will gladden your father’s eyes soon,” she tells him. 

“Perhaps,” Jaime says. “If he can think of a use for me.”

“Your brother’s, then,” she tells him. “And your sister’s.” The words are bitter as wormwood on her tongue.

Jaime is about to reply when the tortoise-like seneschal returns, followed by a short, round bald man in a long green robe whose hands are folded in front of him like a septon.

“Ser Jaime, the very walls of the Red Keep ...” The round man pulls up short at the sight of Jaime’s stump and his own right hand flies to his mouth. “Who has done this?” he asks. “Your lord father will be most distressed.”

“No more than I was,” Jaime says grimly. “Do you mean to tell me, Varys, that you had no idea where I was or what had befallen me?”

Varys shrugs. “A vague idea,” he says, “but war touches us all, even my little birds. Your father sent men looking for you.”

“Others found me first, my Lord Spider,” Jaime says. “Will my father see me now? Or are there more pressing matters before the Small Council?”

“Lord Tywin wishes above all things to see you,” Varys says.

 _Then why did he not come to find his son?_ Brienne wonders.

The seneschal clears his throat; when Varys and Jaime both stare at him, he looks as though he might draw his head right down inside his collar. “A thousand pardons, Ser Jaime,” he says.

“Have you wronged me so many times?” Jaime asks.

“N- no, my lord,” he says. “Only ... I ... wondered ... what about these men? And the lady?”

Jaime nods. “Lord Bolton’s men have delivered me safely from Harrenhal,” he says, “and I promised them a reward. Lady Brienne is my ... guest. Find her a suitable apartment for her stay in King’s Landing.”

“Very well, my lord,” the seneschal says. “Perhaps Maegor’s Holdfast would suit the young lady ... Or the Maidenvault.”

“The Maidenvault is full of Tyrell ladies,” Varys says. “Very agreeable indeed, and I am certain they would welcome Lady Brienne’s friendship.”

However charming and agreeable Margaery Tyrell and her ladies are, there will be no friendship between Brienne and them. She knows they laughed at her behind her back, and worse, King Renly was scarce cold on his bier before Margaery was betrothed to his nephew Joffrey.

"No," Brienne says.

“Lady Brienne does not care for roses, though they have overrun King’s Landing,” Jaime says. "Maegor's it must be then!"

“See to it, Tomard,” Varys orders the seneschal.

Jaime and Brienne follow Varys and Tomard through a narrow passageway under the raised portcullis and into the middle bailey. Brienne has never seen anything to match the scale of the Red Keep and she wonders if she is treading the same paths as Visenya and Rhaenys. No painted court ladies laughed at _them_ when _they_ went to war. 

“This is where we part,” Jaime tells her softly as they pass under the shadow of an immense tower. “I will come to you when I can.”

***

The room Tomard finds for her has a window that overlooks Blackwater Bay and a bed that would comfortably fit at least two of her. There is a bowl piled high with peaches and cherries and grapes on the small table.

A tub of beaten copper occupies one corner of the room; Brienne silently calls down the blessings of the Seven on Tomard after he sends her two maids with steaming water, a stack of clean towels, and neatly folded clothing.

After the maids have scrubbed her back and tutted over the condition of her hair and skin, Brienne asks them to leave her. At the door, the older one whispers something to the younger, and they both laugh. Brienne knows that they are laughing at her.  

 _Words are wind_ , she tells herself. _They cannot hurt you._

Brienne leans back cautiously, learning that if she turns slightly sideways, she can submerge all of her body except her knees in the steaming scented water. _I could stretch out in the baths at Harrenhal. Before Jaime joined me._ She closes her eyes, though she had not closed them then, when Jaime came stumbling into her tub, his chest and belly a motley of bruises, yellow, green and purple, and his ribs showing through his skin. His legs were so long. _The light shone on his shoulders. He was naked as his nameday. I should have looked away from what lay between his legs._ Brienne had seen horses and dogs and cattle rutting but never a naked man before. Something inside her melts and she moves her right hand between her own legs, imagining the fingers stroking her, their calluses and their gentle pressure, are Jaime’s, imagining that she kissed him when he lay in her arms. Eyes squeezed closed, she shudders to her culmination, splashing cooling water all over the floor. 

There is a sharp knock at the door; doubtless the maids have returned to dress her and laugh at her some more. Brienne uncoils herself, steps from the tub and reaches for one of the towels stacked on the floor. Two are soaked - _my own fault_ \- and the third barely reaches the middle of her thighs when she wraps it around her.

“Come,” Brienne says loudly. 

The woman who enters is exquisite, a dream in crimson silk, whose long golden hair outshines the embroidery on her dress. Brienne does not need her rich clothes and the outsized lion on her neck to know her; only Jaime’s sister could have those cheekbones and gleaming green eyes.

“Your Grace,” Brienne says, desperately trying to curtsy without losing her towel. “What brings ...? I mean, what can I ...?”

“My brother Jaime has told me so much about you. I just wanted to thank you personally for bringing him back to me.” Cersei Lannister, Queen Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, has a smile as sharp as a blade. "I owe you a debt, and Lannisters always pay their debts."


End file.
